—Systemic change begins with personal change—
Coach, Speaker and Board member
Lorna has served as President of multinational consumer goods companies for 20+ years, in Danone, Kraft and Mondelez. She was the President of Kraft China and the President of Nabisco North America amongst others.
She has been a key leader in Danone’s purpose journey and as a Global Ambassador for the B Corp movement. In 2017, Lorna served as CEO and Chairwoman of Danone North America, where she established that $6 Billion entity as a Public Benefit Corporation and it achieved B Corp status in 2018, making it the largest B Corp in the world.
She is a member of the Social Mission Board of Seventh Generation, the Advisory Board of Radicle Impact and the board of the Volgenau Climate Initiative. Lorna has done a TED talk on Radical Interdependence which has been viewed by nearly 3 million people.
She has lived and led businesses in 7 countries and is passionate about supporting people to live magnificent lives and wildlife conservation, especially the African rhino.
If you haven't listened to my conversation with Lorna before taking the sustainability leadership workshop, I recommend listening to it first: 794: Lorna Davis, part 3: Before taking the sustainability leadership workshop. In this episode, Lorna shares her experiences, reactions, and thoughts from taking the workshop. They're all multifaceted. They come from her classmates, leading them in the exercises, being led by them in the exercises, curiosity, and more. She shares vulnerabilities as openly as her discoveries and new commitments. I predict you'll find her engaging and captivating. Longtime listeners have heard me talk about the workshop, maybe Evelyn, but you might think consider me biased as the person who developed it and Evelyn as someone else leading it. Check out Lorna's experiences. If interested in learning more about the workshop or taking it, contact me.
Lorna first appeared on this podcast in 2021. We became friends and remained so, though we challenge each other, as you'll hear in this conversation. We don't try to. Just things about the other annoy us. But how much we respect and learn from each other outshines that annoyance. Lorna knew about the Spodek Method and workshops for years. I don't know why she didn't join one until now, but something clicked and she decided to. I think meeting Evelyn led her to see the technique appealed to people like her and unlike me; that acting as much as I do on sustainability didn't result from a quirk of mine. In this episode, she shares her views, concerns, and thoughts about the workshop and how it might affect her and her relationships. We plan to record another conversation after she finishes the workshop. If you haven't thought about taking it, learn more about it here, then compare how you feel about taking it with what Lorna expresses. I don't know about you, but I'm curious how she'll experience it. Have I overpromised? Is there something quirky about me leading me to unique or unusual results? Don't forget to come back to listen to her experience after taking the workshop.
Lorna's challenge is one of the longest and most personal at over a year. I also couldn't wait to bring her story to you most because within weeks she was reporting the joys overcoming the challenges. We've become friends through her challenge. Within months she started sending senior executives my way as her sharing her challenge with them led them to follow. In other words, Lorna didn't experience sacrifice or burden. She experienced personal growth and friendship. At least as I heard. Don't take my word. Listen for yourself. Maybe because we met through guests Tensie Whelan, NYU-Stern's head of sustainable business and Vincent Stanley, director at Patagonia, she's outgoing and friendly. Or maybe from her experience leading, which she describes in her TED talk that came toward the end of her year buying no clothes. In any case, I keep having to remind myself she's from the C-suite of Danone, a 30 billion company, and that she helped Danone USA become the largest B-corp yet. If anyone could claim to need clothes, she could. Listen to what she found instead. I hope you find similar relief from compulsion---saving money or time, connecting with family, having more fun, etc---as well as what else she found and shared.
This episode is longer, but full of inside views at a leverage point of leadership and the environment. Consulting firms and business schools wish they had access to global corporate leaders at the frontier of change like Lorna. We spoke in-person about multinationals she's led across the globe. And she takes on one of the longest personal challenges of any guest so far. Lest you think the conversation was all about mega-corporations, we also talked about vegetables and leaders reduced to tears on seeing what environmental values they could have acted on but had put off too long and felt the consequences. Lorna has influenced big, global business, helping shift Danone USA to become a B-corp, working directly with the CEO of the company that made about $30 billion last year with over 100,000 employees. What's a B-corp? What difference does it make? Lorna will explain everything, largely from her personal, inside experiences. I've known about B-corps since studying them in business school over a decade ago. Lorna makes things clearer and more engaging from her experience. The shift in corporate structure is huge, likely a systemic change to capitalism enacted voluntarily by capitalists, not government. I find it intriguing. Even if you know about B-corps, hearing her inside view will -- I don't know any other way to say it -- blow your mind. It's one of the greatest signs of hope and expectation of success I've seen. She also shares her story about changing from wanting to win the rat race but not achieving it to living by her values and succeeding more. Read the transcript.